Vapor
by valkyrie-fe
Summary: Most of the Seekers had never seen clouds before – Cybertron hadn’t really had any. Starscream, however, remembered them from the last time he’d been to this planet. As the others investigate read: play , he can’t bring himself to do anything more than w


**Title:** Vapor

**Rating:** PG, I suppose. o.o

**Characters/Pairings:** SkyfirexStarscream (slash or non, whichever way you wanna take it), Thundercracker and Skywarp

**Warnings and Disclaimers:** Angstiness ahoy. (is that a word...?) Idea came from tfbunnyfarm on livejournal.

**Summary: **Most of the Seekers had never seen clouds before – Cybertron hadn't really had any. Starscream, however, remembered them from the last time he'd been to this planet. As the others investigate (read: play), he can't bring himself to do anything more than watch.

**Universe:** G1 Cartoon

**Note:** Specifically this is right after Starscream gets reprimanded for "testing" the energon cubes in More than Meets the Eye (Part 2) This is assuming/pretending there was at least a day lapse between the end of that scene and the assemblage for the attack on the ruby crystal mine in Burma. Hehe...

Apologies for my failure at titles, as usual.

--

"I wonder what those things are, anyway."

The statement startled Starscream. He had thought he was alone, sitting on a nondescript cliff-face near the newly constructed headquarters. Looking over his shoulder, he found Thundercracker approaching him, Skywarp following behind him. Starscream stared. Certainly they weren't there for silly comforts. It hadn't been the first time he was shot down and ridiculed by Megatron.

Starscream looked back at the Earth sunset. "What things?" he inquired boredly.

"_Those_ things," Thundercracker insisted, pointing at the horizon. Starscream squinted optics at the flaming sunset. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary; the sunset looked just as it should. He frowned at his blue wingmate.

"I don't see—"

"The... _fluffy_ things," Skywarp grumbled.

Starscream looked westward once more. "Fluffy...?"

"Yes, those," he said. "They're up there, too." This was illustrated with a purple finger jabbing upward. Starscream tilted his head back, staring up at the puffy white clouds hovering in the slightly darker portion of the sky. "No wonder he gave up being a scientist," he heard Skywarp mumble, and sent his fellow seeker a glare .

"They're just clouds," he sneered. "Nothing special."

"Nothing special?" Thundercracker repeated. "We don't have those things on Cybertron!"

"No, we don't," Starscream agreed. "But they're fairly common on other planets."

Thundercracker grinned at Skywarp. "Hey, I wonder what it would feel like to cut through those things?" Skywarp chuckled agreeably.

"Chilly," Starscream answered dully, staring hard at a point past the cliff-face.

Skywarp frowned at him. "What?" he said. "How would _you_ know?"

Starscream gave him a critical look. "Because," he said slowly, tone oozing sarcasm, "Those clouds are made of ice crystals. Frozen water vapor. H2O. Like the other three-fourths of this Primus-forsaken rock."

"I _know_ what water is," the purple mech growled. "What's up with you anyway?"

"Yeah," Thundercracker agreed, "we all want to go back home. You're not the only one."

Starscream just scowled at his wingmates, but said nothing. He only glared sullenly at the horizon, grinding a heel into the dusty ground. What was _up_ with him, they wanted to know? Oh, nothing, really. Just that he had wondered the same thing, a long time ago. Wondered it out loud. To Skyfire...

He vented air sharply and shook his head, startling his companions into giving him affronted looks. Thundercracker shifted his weight from foot to foot, finally speaking again. "So, you gonna come or what?"

Starscream gave him a vaguely confused look. "Go... where?" The blue seeker sighed, shaking his head. Skywarp made a noise of disgust. "Forget him," he scoffed. "Let's go. We still have the rest of this Earth night until we attack those mines." Thundercracker shrugged, casting a glance back at Starscream, who still didn't seem to be really in the present. He still transformed and followed Skywarp, leaving their third behind to watch them. Starscream stared after them, trying only to watch his fellow seekers, and not to hear an amused chuckle right in his audios. _"Now, why would you wonder a thing like that?"_

Why indeed.

He clenched his jaw painfully, staring out at the orange-bottomed clouds that had swallowed his wingmates, willing away the memory of that patient, soothing voice.

--

(So honest to goodness I was gonna add like two more paragraphs to this, but I ended up... not doing that. If only partly because I kind of forgot what I was gonna add, after a friend told me it would be fine ending it there. xDDD So yeah.


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